Andrea Polli - biography

Andrea Polli is currently an Associate Professor in Fine Arts and Engineering at The University of New Mexico and Mesa Del Sol Chair of Digital Media at the University. Polli's work with science, technology and media has been presented widely in over 100 presentations, exhibitions and performances internationally including the Whitney Museum of American Art Artport and The Field Museum of Natural History, and has been recognized by numerous grants, residencies and awards including UNESCO. Her work has been reviewed by the Los Angeles Times, Art in America, Art News, NY Arts and others. She has published several audio CDs, DVDs two book chapters and many papers with MIT Press, Cambridge University Press and others.

She currently works in collaboration with atmospheric scientists to develop systems for understanding storm and climate through sound (called sonification).  Recent projects include: a spatialized sonification of highly detailed models of storms that devastated the New York area; a series of sonifications of climate in Central Park; and a real-time multi-channel sonification and visualization of weather in the Arctic. In 2007/2008, she spent seven weeks in Antarctica on a National Science Foundation funded project.

As a member of the steering committee for New York 2050, a wide-reaching project envisioning the future of the New York City region, she worked with city planners, environmental scientists, historians and other experts to look at the impact of climate on the future of human life both locally and globally.

She has received a Master of Fine Arts in Time Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and in 2000, she was voted Teacher of the Year at Columbia College in Chicago in recognition of her work connecting students to the wider community through collaborative projects.   

These projects included performances and exhibitions at the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art and a large scale public art project connecting 5 neighborhood arts organizations with live web streaming, an exhibition at the Chicago Cultural Center and six billboards.   Pause. was featured as the Millennium Community Artwork for Illinois and funded by The Mid Atlantic Arts Council and Ameritech.

From 2005-2008, Polli served as the Director of the Integrated Media Arts Masters of Fine Arts Program at Hunter College/CUNY in New York City.  From 2006-2008 she served as co-chair of the Leonardo Education Forum, an affiliate of the MIT Press and the College Art Association of America (CAA) that promotes the advancement of research and academic scholarship at the intersections of art, science, and technology and founding co-chair of the New York Society for Acoustic Ecology, a multi-disciplinary group exploring the urban sound environment and a chapter of the American and World Forums for Acoustic Ecology.  She now serves as Vice-President of the American Society for Acoustic Ecology.